No talk about Thai-Cambodia conflicts in Asean forum

This is mainly because the ten-member regional grouping does not have the mechanism to address such disputes and partly because no member wants to deal with it in a regional setting.

Disputes and conflicts between Asean members are nothing new. Some have resulted in serious clashes between neighbours. Most of these disputes stemmed from overlapping claims on land and territorial waters. Others were political in nature.

Collectively, Asean can point to the conflict in Cambodia, in which the group made collective effort for strategic and security reason in the late 1980s.

Asean was at the forefront of the Jakarta Informal Meeting (JIM) that directly led to the Paris Peace Agreement in 1991, a move that helped paved the way for an eventual end to the Cambodian killing fields. Vietnam-backed Hun Sen was on one side while the Asean founding members, including Thailand, were on the other side. The idea was to contain the expansion of Vietnam's influence into the mainland of Southeast Asia.

An Asean "troika" was activated following the 1997 coup in Phnom Penh, when Hun Sen ousted his co-prime minister by force. Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines were mandated by the regional grouping to seek a solution to the dispute in order to pave the way for Cambodia's membership into the Asean grouping.

By 1999, the troika - Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines - became part of an Asean principle during the ministerial meeting in Bangkok. The then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked Thailand to activate the troika to help settle the political deadlock in Burma. Rangoon immediately shot down the idea before it got off the ground.

In late 2004, following the massacre at Tak Bai, then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra nearly brought Asean to its knees when he threatened to walk out of the Vientiane summit if anybody raised the issue.

More than 80 unarmed Malay Muslims died at the hands of security officials after they were stacked one on top of another by security officials handling the protest. Their death drew criticisms from countries around the world, including Malaysia and Indonesia. The issue subsided after Thaksin met the Indonesian and Malaysian leaders on the sidelines of the summit.